please help sex my L226 (with pics)

All posts regarding the care and breeding of these catfishes from South America.
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trc007
Posts: 12
Joined: 29 Mar 2009, 21:14
Location 2: united kingdom, wiltshire

please help sex my L226 (with pics)

Post by trc007 »

im very confused! all have minimal odontode growth but i dont think they are female. would really appreciate your opinion.
Image
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the lighter one in the 3rd pic is the 3rd fish. pics 1 and 2 show the same fish
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MatsP
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Location 1: North of Cambridge
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Re: please help sex my L226 (with pics)

Post by MatsP »

Very hard to tell from those photos. If my life depended on getting a female out of that group, I'd go for the dark one in the first two photos - it looks fatter. Could of course be that it's just fatter anyways (males and females of P. maccus certainly grow quite fat given enough wood in the tank).

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Mats
trc007
Posts: 12
Joined: 29 Mar 2009, 21:14
Location 2: united kingdom, wiltshire

Re: please help sex my L226 (with pics)

Post by trc007 »

should it be quite clear when it comes to sexing these fish? seems a lot harder than i thought it would be
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MatsP
Posts: 21038
Joined: 06 Oct 2004, 13:58
My articles: 4
My images: 28
My cats species list: 117 (i:33, k:0)
My aquaria list: 10 (i:8)
My BLogs: 4 (i:0, p:164)
Spotted: 187
Location 1: North of Cambridge
Location 2: England.

Re: please help sex my L226 (with pics)

Post by MatsP »

If the fish are settled in, well conditionend and "happy with life", then it should be fairly easy [I'm going by my experience with P. maccus - they have spawned a few times, but I've not had any fry (yet!)] - the males will be very hairy on the back half [or a bit more than half] of the body. If the fish just arrived in the shop, then they are most likely quite stressed (or have been recently), and they are most likely somewhat starved. Both starvation and stress will reduce the sexual differences in the fish.

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Mats
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